Great questions by The Heritage Foundation (see "Ten Questions for Leon Panetta"), although we'd like to add one more for Messrs. Panetta and Obama:

Whereas government's #1 responsibility is to protect and defend its citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic (i.e., keep us safe), can you think of anything else to cut besides our defense budget, like for example, the following items or programs:

• Testing the exercise ability of sick shrimp on a treadmill; [Tests show that like sick humans, they don't do so well...]

• The new fleet of government limousines, which grew by 73% during the first two years of the Obama administration;

• Funding Jello wrestling in the Antarctic;

• Digitizing Grateful Dead photographs;

• A laundry-folding robot; 

• $146 million annually in flight upgrades for federal employees who refuse to fly coach;

• Money for Alaska Airlines to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737;

• $1.8 million to help build a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia;

• $3.9 million spent by the SEC to rearrange desks and offices at its Washington, D.C. headquarters;

• The Conservation Reserve program, which pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land;

• $1.3 million/per month, which the National Institute of Health spends to rent a lab that it cannot use;

• $20 million for "commemoration of success" celebrations related to Iraq and Afghanistan;

• Swine waste management in North Carolina; [What about the swine waste management problem we've got in Washington DC?!]

• And the list goes on and on......

Memo to Messrs. Obama, Panetta, et al: Get rid of the sick shrimp, sick politicians, digital Grateful Dead photos and limos before you touch a penny of our defense budget, okay?!

[Posted by R.S.]